Why do ladies keep the seat down in unisex public restrooms?

Translation: my sex is too lazy to raise the toilet seat in a unisex public restroom and prefers to take target practice at the available aperture. Most of us are bad shots and the seats generally end up with a nasty coat of unpleasantness.

I imagine that, for a woman, using a public restroom is an ordeal. It takes work for a woman to avoid skin-to-seat contact. Yet her bladder will sometimes insist that it must be NOW, and off she goes to the public potty.

Now, here's my question, based on hours and hours of observing the human species at Starbucks.

Why don't women raise the seat when they're done? After all, they're the ones who would benefit from it. A man, being fundamentally lazy and selfish, won't lower a raised seat. He'll just have a bigger target to shoot for. (Amazingly, some still contrive to still miss. After they figure out the Grand Unified Theory, researchers could productively spend their remaining years understanding why.)

Despite their obvious self-interest in raising the seat, women appear to very rarely do so. It's not like they're at home, where they can badger the men of the household into acting civilized. And those tissue-paper seat covers don't offer any protection from evil microbes.

This is a lighthearted subject to be sure, but the premise seems rooted in patriarchy: men can't be bothered to perform a simple task because they're too lazy, and this laziness results in women being inconvenienced, therefore women should be forced to adapt.

That's not fair, is it?

Let's restate the problem: some men are lazy and don't put the toilet seat up before peeing, so they end up peeing on the seat. This inconveniences anyone who comes in later and wants to sit — whether they're a woman or a man.

Men are causing the problem, and everyone is suffering as a result. So the ideal solution is for men to stop causing the problem. If women are forced to adapt, then not only are they being made unfairly responsible for a problem they didn't cause, but there's also no incentive for men to stop peeing on toilet seats so the problem will continue.

But don't despair, men! There's a super easy way to avoid peeing on toilet seats. Wanna know what it is? Brace yourselves:

Sit down to pee unless you're using a urinal.

I started sitting down to pee a few years ago and it's great! I no longer have to clean accidental pee splatters off the toilets and floors in my house. In public restrooms I no longer have to decide whether to lift the seat and contaminate my hand or risk peeing on the seat.

And you know what? It's really not so bad. It takes me like five seconds longer to use the restroom, but I feel much better about not leaving a trail of pee behind me.